Languages and Genes an interdisciplinary conference
Friday / September 8th - 10th / 8:30 AM
McCune Conference Room, 6020 HSSB
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The conference Languages and Genes will investigate how different disciplines, in particular linguistics, genetics, archeology, and anthropology, can collaborate in investigating questions of human migrations that took place before or at the margins or recorded history. Both linguistics and genetics provide evidence of inheritance through human populations; however, their results are in principle independent, given that genes are inherited biologically, while languages are inherited culturally. This difference can be seen clearly in cases where, for instance, a child is adopted into a community that is not its native community. The question of just how much correlation there is between the biological and cultural histories of populations remains an open issue that will be one of the turning points of the conference. The contributions of linguistics and genetics to this question represent only the first stage of a complex investigation, since it is also necessary to study the social circumstances underlying the divergence of genetic and linguistic patterns. A critical role is played by archaeological evidence of the physical situation in which the divergence took place, as well as by anthropological evidence of the social parameters and constraints underlying the divergence.

www.linguistics.ucsb.edu/projects/Languages-and-Genes

Sponsored by the IHC, College of Letters and Science, Department of Linguistics, Max Planck Society

The IHC is located on the 6th floor of the Humanities and Social Sciences Building (HSSB) Room 6046, adjacent to the Events Center on the UCSB campus. Park in lots 21 or 27 for events held in HSSB.

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